Whose
call?

OTTAWA — As Transport Minster Marc Garneau hurtled down the test track at Blainville, Que., trying to ram into the back of another vehicle, he found the hardest thing to do was to keep his foot on the gas. For this test to be successful, the former astronaut would have to fight his instinct to hit the brakes and let technology take over.

The technology worked, detecting the presence of the vehicle in front of it, activating the braking system, bringing the car and Canada’s transport minister to a safe stop.

But as Garneau and his provincial counterparts consider ways to deal with the very real jeopardy caused by distracted drivers, advanced car technology that would override its human operators, like the one in the Blainville test car, is just one of them.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard believes more people would put down their phone if distracted driving became a separate offence under Canada’s criminal code. “I think the federal government has to look at it from the criminal code point of view,” Couillard said.

The issue arose at the fall meeting of federal and provincial transport ministers, but there was no consensus that Canada’s criminal code should be changed to incorporate a specific sanction against distracted driving — at least not yet.

“In the meantime, I would suggest that when you get in the car, turn everything off,” Garneau said in a recent interview with Postmedia.

Clearly not enough Canadians are getting that message. Distracted driving is believed to be among the leading factors in fatal collisions in every province and territory in Canada.

“While the government of Manitoba is not actively pursuing changes to the criminal code to include distracted driving, we are open to a dialogue with our provincial and federal counterparts to determine the best approach to addressing this very real and emerging public safety concern,” Manitoba’s infrastructure minister Blaine Pedersen said.

“I think every single province and territory for the most part spoke out because it is an epidemic across the country,” Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said. “There were different opinions in the room about the need to criminalize the behaviour.”

There was broad consensus, however, that more education is required to make Canadians aware of distracted driving and that more research is needed to fully understand the extent of the problem.

“Increasing penalties and increasing fines and increasing demerits alone is not going to solve our problem,” said Robyn Robertson, a criminologist who heads the Ottawa-based Traffic Injury Research Foundation. “It’s part of the solution, but it’s not the entire solution.”

The foundation is playing a lead role in a new group called the Canadian Coalition against Distracted Driving. That coalition is preparing for the release, likely in early January, of a 15-point action plan to tackle distracted driving — a plan that will include elements for legislators, law enforcement and community organizations.

“Changing behaviour is one of the hardest things to do,” Robertson said.

A massive education campaign is going to be critical so that distracted driving comes to have the same social stench as drunk driving. “We wouldn’t dream of letting a relative or a friend get in a car if they were intoxicated,” Garneau said. “We need to take the exact same approach as far as I’m concerned with respect to somebody who gets in a car and starts to casually talk on their cellphone to a friend or, worse still, texting,” he added.

“It’s taken more than a generation for us to successfully convey the notion that you can’t drive while alcohol-impaired,” said Ontario’s Del Duca. “It still happens though, but I think we recognize in society that it’s a behaviour that you shouldn’t be engaging in. I don’t think that on distracted driving we have a generation’s worth of time to wait for real action.”

Societal and peer pressure has helped reduce the number of drunk driving accidents and death. Changing the way Canadians came to view drunk driving happened, in part, by the seriousness of sanctions for those who got behind the wheel while intoxicated.

Sanctions for distracted drivers have stiffened in recent years but still vary widely from province to province.

Whether those sanctions — usually a mix of a fines and the loss of some demerit points — are strict enough is a point of some contention among various levels of government and safety advocates. But for Garneau, the bigger point is that Canadians need to be educated about the sanctions.

“I’m not sure everybody knows about them because everyone is so casual about the whole thing,” Garneau said.

People might be less casual if they understood that use of a smartphone or other technology that distracts a driver can contribute to or be a factor in a dangerous driving charge — a criminal code offence.

A conviction of dangerous driving on its own could bring a jail sentence of up to five years. Dangerous driving that causes bodily harm carries a maximum 10-year sentence. Dangerous driving that causes a death can result in a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.

We need to get that message out much more quickly to make Canadians aware of the fact that this is a serious impediment to driving a car properly. And we need to make Canadians realize that it carries with it consequences

“So there are measures in the criminal code, but from my point of view what concerns me is that I believe — and I believe the science supports it — that driving requires 100 per cent of your concentration. And I say that whether you are hands-free or not hands-free. As soon as you’re in a conversation, your world narrows down. You are not paying attention 100 per cent to the surroundings.

“And that requires educating people to the fact that this is unacceptable. We need to get that message out much more quickly to make Canadians aware of the fact that this is a serious impediment to driving a car properly. And we need to make Canadians realize that it carries with it consequences. I don’t think enough people know that they can lose hundreds of dollars and demerit points,” Garneau said.

There is also broad consensus among federal and provincial policymakers that there needs to be better data collection and research on distracted driving.

“There is data available on the number of offenders through police files provincially but more data on how many people do text and how many people do drive and have conversations at the same time — increasing that database gives us a better understanding of things,” Garneau said.

British Columbia’s Solicitor General Mike Morris said he believes the current criminal code has the appropriate sanctions and that judges have the appropriate flexibility in sentencing to deal with distracted drivers.

And his province, like others, has increased both the fines and the demerit points. Distracted driving in B.C. now will cost you $543 and four demerit points.

Will that cut the incidence of distracted driving? Morris and other policymakers cannot answer that without more research.

“What I want to look at after at least a year of data is whether or not that it’s just one-offs — if it’s an individual getting a ticket and we never see that individual get a ticket again. What I don’t want to see is a majority of the people, like we’ve seen in the past, getting two, three, four, five or 10 subsequent tickets all in the same year or two for distracted driving. That indicates we haven’t hit the sweet spot yet and we’ll have to look at more serious sanctions.”

The government of Ontario was running, for a time, some hard-to-watch television spots in which a young man ends up paralyzed in hospital after running through an intersection while driving and texting. The tag was “It Happens Fast. Put Down the Phone.”

Ontario launched that campaign as it too boosted fines and demerit points.

“While I believe we’re having some impact, our work is not done,” Del Duca said. “We need to continue to deliver a stronger message. I think we do have to look at the regime of penalties we have in place and see, as we continue to get more stats, how well the public is responding on the deterrence side … to the package we brought forward.”

All this research and data collection is certain to be a focus of the next federal-provincial meeting of transport ministers.

“Although overall we know what is going on,” Garneau said, “there’s no question, everybody has a device today and I consider it to be a very, very, very serious risk from a safety point of view.”

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.